All posts tagged OMG Capital

OMG Capital, which was set up in 2004 and grew to run $930 million at its peak in 2009, is closing down and returning all money to investors. Assets had fallen to $230m at the end of October.

Nick Gaze, chief operating officer, told Financial News:

“It’s a brave new world out there. We haven’t had the liquidity. We can’t look investors in the eye and tell them that the market conditions will be conducive to making money any time soon. We’re shutting down from an integrity point of view and a practicality point of view. Our strategy doesn’t work in the current environment.”

OMG ran a long/short equities fund that traded large- and mega-cap stocks without taking a view on the direction of the markets. Typically it turned over the portfolio two to three times a month.

Over the past couple of years, global markets have been characterized by a “risk-on/risk-off” mentality, where investors moved in and out of risky assets together depending on the prevailing economic sentiment and risk appetite. Mr. Gaze said that this has made it difficult for OMG’s fund as it often gets stuck out of positions when the market is falling and then misses the stock move on the way back up.